Wellington geeks/nerds: jooooooooiiiiiin uuuuuuus

Anyone who watches my twitter stream *snort* can now breathe: the details of the plotting mentioned can now be made public.

Brian Calhoun (SilverStripe) and I have decided to band bravely together in a novel, nerdy enterprise. Sort of. More an event, really. And we need your help, and the help of everyone you know. Think of this as a clarion call1.

More details before you commit, you say? Not a problem, we reply!

It’s not a new idea, actually. Called nerdnite, it started in the States (as so much great nerdiness/geekiness2 does) many years ago. Not quite days of yore, but certainly a few. Its purpose? To bring together people who have obsessions, and get them to talk about said obsessions and, maybe, even talk to each other. Gasp.

As one might expect, it happens in bars, since that’s where the beer/wine/etc3 is.

The format tends to take the shape of a few presentations on subjects ranging from different types of worms, to sports, to Wolverine’s various guises over the years, and anything in between. There’s absolutely no limit to what people can talk about, or how they present it (apparently, music gets perpetrated too sometimes).

Since its inception in Boston, it’s spread like a cute, nerdy little virus all over the States and now into other countries . Including Germany, of course4. And so, we thought we’d organise one for Wellington. Because Wellington’s brilliant, and we reckon there’s no shortage of people who’d love to get involved.

Please don’t prove us wrong.

What do we need from you? Well, participants5! If you have something you get all geeky/nerdy about, tell us. Perhaps you might like to talk about it at some point, in front of some people. Or, perhaps you have a friend/acquaintance/pet/deadly enemy who you think might like to get involved.

Or, of course, you think you’d like to come along and watch (we still want to hear from you), or have ideas around the perfect venue or some other way you’d like to contribute.

C’mon, it’ll be fun! Watch out for the twitter hashtag #nerdnitewelly, and it’s easy enough to contact us by email, too (for me, for example, just look up the page)*. Should you prefer Twitter, we’re @teh_aimee and @unbrand (just guess who’s who).

I’ll leave you with the tagline: “It’s like the Discovery Channel… with beer!”

UPDATE: I just realised this was my 100th post (on Sciblogs, at least). How appropriate 🙂

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Note: Non-nerds/geeks are also welcome. We enjoy fresh meat new people. Ooh, and we’re not limiting it to Wellingtonians – it’s just going to be taking place here.

1 For the less linguaphilic of you, this means an emphatic call to action.

2 As previously mentioned, I’m not going to get into the debate. Again, xkcd sums it up perfectly. Which means that geeks are just as welcome as nerds.

3 The stuff that helps with the talking to (and in front of) each other.

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